While it may not apply across the board, it is certainly possible that they don't want to give said brands free advertising, or don't want to be seen to be endorsing a particular company/brand/idea.

For me it seem the "interesting" bundles are the "main"/numbered ones. Those with specific titles (like "Frozenbyte" or "Introversion") have tended to be developer specific (with some exceptions such as the "more than average price" extras) and so tend to be a little "samey" and one doesn't get as much variation from them.

I believe the word you are looking for is dogma, not religion. It is quite possible to be dogmatic about completely secular things; doing so is misguided but certainly not religious.

Um, I know this is slashdot, but did you even bother to read the whole summary*? It specifically said "... a method of combining the carbon-based material with metallic nanostructures to use as photodetectors that could greatly increase the amount of light optical communications devices could handle" (emphasis mine). Sure that particular sentence didn't mention it, but taking it on its own seems a bit "quote-miney" to me. Then there's the title of course, which seems pretty clear to me.

*It's summary, not summery; that means "like summer".

Until I read the comments I thought they meant the other type of Bourbon :/.

Yeah, I'm not convinced by it. As TapeCutter pointed out they may only be interested in US citizens (doubtful though considering they mention world market share). It's not just that though - they seem to have reversed it in order to draw their conclusions. Sure there may be more "liberal"* Mac users by % than Windows users, but does that mean that liberals are more likely to be Mac users than PC users? Considering the difference in market share (89.2% : 10.8% according to the infographic) the data isn't representative. Also, the breakdown of users surveyed (52% : 25% : 23% - Windows : Mac : "other/those who don't define themselves as either") seem to suggest that the actual breakdown is "liberals" who use Mac is 14.5% (58% of 25%), "liberals" who use Windows is 18.72% (36% of 52%), "others" (non-liberal doesn't necessarily mean conservative) who use Mac is 10.5% (42% of 25%) and "others" who use Windows is 33.28% (64% of 52%) with "non-aligned" (presumably "no preference/both/Linux, BSD etc") people making up the remaining 23%. Assuming my calculations are accurate, that makes the split of those surveyed (who are either Mac or Windows users since they don't give data for the "others") 43.1% "liberal" to 56.9% "non-liberal", which would seem to suggest that those who were surveyed were a particularly liberal bunch considering most Americans seem to describe themselves as conservative or moderate (according to this article the % liberals is actually about 15-25% of the population assuming nothing drastic has happened in the last 2 years).

*"Liberal" is in scare quotes since it is self-reported and what someone claims to be and what they actually are can be wildly different. Different people use different definitions for things.

The same can be said of the "4 year college degree" bit as well. Windows degree = 28.08%, Mac degree = 16.75, Windows !degree = 23.92%, Mac !degree = 8.25%, with the rest, again, being "other". This data is even less useful than the political alignment as it can be pretty much be written off by the fact that Windows is extremely dominant in market share (i.e. the masses generally use Windows) and that, generally speaking, Windows computers are cheaper than the equivalent Macs (degree = higher chance of high payed job -> more likely to be willing to spend a lot of money on a computer).

There also seem to be some other rather suspect figures. They have placed "Win users are more likely to be suburban/rural" opposite "52% of Mac users live in a city". Those are connected but not directly comparable figures (what about urban town dwellers for example, and what are the actual figures for Win users/ non-city Mac users). The fashion/aesthetics clothing section doesn't give any direct comparisons, and under food & drink, I don't see how any of it is relevant other than possibly the vegetarianism bit. The newspaper preference is also not directly comparable (unless by "The Times" they mean "The New York Times" - considering there is a "The Times" paper, in the UK/on the internet at least, that would at best be misleading) and from websites down to magazines they simply list items (which are presumably "preferred" by that group, but without knowing the selection criteria the data is useless; that also applies to most of the food and drink section).

Interestingly, the figures on the bar chart at the bottom which shows preferred computer type has different figures than the main infographic. That's probably down to rounding though as the graph also includes a "skipped" option (when that is removed the numbers almost correspond).

All in all, the whole thing screams of data dredging, whether intentional or not, and is certainly skewed by the fact that all respondents were visitors to the Hunch rather than members of the general public, and that the creator of the infographic is a Mac user (although the same would likely be true in reverse for a Windows user - the only way to be truly unbiased in a situation like this is if the creator is not a computer user).

To be fair that's for digital signals, not analogue audio - for audio they at least need to be gold plated coat hangers ;).

In that case it's a compromise of content quantity vs. video/audio quality (due to limited bandwidth), so there is an actual advantage to doing it beyond making the "premium" version better (even if all the additional cable channels are crap). Do you have any evidence that the compression was intentionally increased to make HD seem like a worthwhile option? I'm in the UK, so wouldn't really have been exposed to such information (or paid attention if I was), but I doubt it is the case (although US cable companies do seem to pull a lot of shit on their customers, so it's not beyond reason). Also cable TV is a closed system - it's either SD or HD from that company in most areas (in the US at least) - the same cannot be said for music downloads.

I'm not saying that Apple won't decrease the quality of standard (SD?) song downloads but I don't see all that much in it for them - those who don't care about quality will continue to buy the "SD" versions, those who do but not enough to buy the new "HD" ones (will depend on pricing) will either go to another service (Amazon for example) or go back to CDs and those who care enough to buy the "HD" ones will buy them (mostly audiophiles, so not likely to be effected by the quality of the "SD" ones). Where a non-audiophile person falls (between Amazon/CD etc and "HD" iTunes) depends mostly on song price, not on the quality of the "SD" track. Of course this assumes that everyone is aware of other services etc (although I'm sure most that aren't probably fall into the "don't care about quality" category).

As TaoPhoenix alluded to, what if your likeness is being used to promote (i.e. make money for/increase usage of/improve the public image of) something that you vehemently oppose, or that paints you in a bad light, or whatever?

I hardly think you would be happy to be used in the advertising for an extreme political party that has views at the opposite end of the spectrum to you, or even on a less extreme level, if you were used to promote Windows while being a rabid Mac/Linux/whatever fanboy. In the actual instance that the article is about, the person in the photo is being painted as freeloader, which is hardly something which has any kind of "cool-factor" to it. If you agree to be painted in such a light (whether you are being paid or not) then it's OK, but otherwise it isn't.

That doesn't even touch on the rights of the photographer, for which the same things apply more or less (not wanting to promote an opposing ideology or for a company to profit from their hard work without compensation etc).

While most wouldn't care that much if their likeness were used on some random billboard, and many wouldn't about photos they had taken, that doesn't give anyone the right to do it without permission from both parties (assuming it is in private property, otherwise only the photographer has rights I think, although morally speaking it wouldn't hurt to ask).

Superhyperturbozoomspeed.net? Nah, they've gotta go with Compuglobalhypermeganet.

Please never mention sex in the same sentence as "it's a trap!" again - horrifying mental images result!

That's already happened - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Reflex for Wii, Call of Duty: Black Ops for Wii

I've never played them, so I don't know how they compare to CoD on the HD consoles or PC, but they certainly exist. It's not really been heavily publicised though, so I doubt the kind of person that'd be swayed by it would know about it. Heck, a lot of people I know who're into CoD think it's a 360 exclusive purely because it plays the 360 logo animation, thing, at the end of the ads.

I assume by public school you mean state school. In the UK public school usually means private school for some bizarre reason (apparently because they are founded or endowed for public use and subject to public management or control)

I assume it means the part of the Russian Federation which is part of Europe rather than Asia

I'm not 100% sure about this but in the UK at least I'm fairly sure most, if not all, ISPs are available everywhere in the country* with the exception of virgin media cable internet (since you need to be in a cabled area, and you can still get virgin broadband via phone-line (ADSL/ADSL2+)). I'm no broadband expert but my understanding is that all equipment is owned by BT and then rented by the smaller ISPs (with the exception of some of the other big ISPs who use their own tech in major telephone exchanges). As such, any ISP is available anywhere that is capable of ADSL*. There aren't the regional monopolies that seem to exist in the US since almost everyone uses ADSL(or 2+) and rely on the same pone system. I don't know if the situation is the same in Eire/ROI, but it I suspect it is and that Eircom is their equivalent of BT.

*some very remote areas with no/very poor phone line are obviously n/a